In school you learned the subjects given by the priests.
You received the books of information and knowledge.
You were excited and curious for the wonders ahead,
to learn about the world and its very details.
After some times the signs arrived -
the shocking thunders, the endless rain.
And when it came, the gods tortured you.
Through it you learned a bitter lesson.
Those given books were your evil Bibles.
You had no choice but to surrender to them.
Memorize details no matter how minor they were.
Dismiss your opinions no matter how important they were.
No one gave care to what you had in mind.
No one minded to what you think things should be.
Force yourself to think in such a constricted way
that pleased your gods, the sheets of final answers.
For they would decide your blurry future
with their permanent answers to everything you had learned.
They would judge how intelligent you were.
Whether you were smart or just full of yourself.
After your failure the followers would come.
They were ready to shatter your soul
with their piercing words so sharp and precise
that drilled your ears and cracked your sanity.
At that moment you would understand
there was a standard you had to live up to.
Forget about the world and its very details.
Be like them and worship their gods.
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello! Here to complete the WRFF request!
The standard way to say this would be "After some time, the signs arrived"it seems that this poem is about giving up religion? I am unsure. One of the major problems about this is how vague it is. I could never tell what was literal and what was metaphorical, but I have a feeling that most of it is metaphor. That's not a good thing for a poem with as wide a scope as this.
The first stanza was much more literal, but I think it was almost too literal. It was a little boring. There was nothing there that made me feel anything. "You were excited and curious for the wonders ahead," --> this is an example of the "telling not showing" sort of thing people always talk about. Don't just tell your readers that you were excited, show your eager hands clutching the books to your chest, imagining all the wonders within. Or whatever. Just put some interest in the words!
I think you need a good mix between the vagueness of the rest of the poem and the boring straightforwardness of the rest of the poem.
There were several place when your diction was awkward. It wasn't wrong, exactly, but you didn't phrase things the way natural people would say them. Most of them are only off by one or two words.
I'll put these small nit picky things here:
This sentence could benefit from a comma, and perhaps an extra word like, "Through it all, you learned..."
Technically, this sentence is fine, but I read it strangely the first time. Perhaps you might consider changing the word order to "The books you were give were your..."
I notice that this is mostly writen in past tense, but when you write an imperative sentence (for example: "Memorize details no mater how minor they were."), it is implied to be in the present tense. That means that the sentence I used as an example shows a glaring discrepancy in tense. I suggest that you either make these sentences artful fragments and say "Memorized details..." or, if you like being grammatically correct, say "You had to memorize details..." And you can always continue your sentence by using the -ing form of the word like:
"You had no choice but to surrender to them,
memorizing details no matter how minor they were."
Tense agreement is kind of an important thing for your poetry to sound professional. c:
The way most people would phrase this would be "No one cared what you thought." But if you want to keep "what you had in mind," that's cool too.
Okay, here we run into some problems. First, this is very awkward, and I would change it by saying that most people would say "No one cared what you thought." But that's exactly what the previous line says. This leads me to my next point.
Sometimes repetition is a good thing, and it strengthens points. That kind of repetition uses the same words to achieve its effect. However, a lot of repetition is not good. I would say almost all the time, repetition that uses different words to say the same thing is not good. It varies by the circumstances and poems.
In this case, it just sounds like you're running out of things to say, so you're wording things differently. I found this a lot through your poem. Even if it's just in themes. I like the repetition you used at the end. That, for example, is good repetition.
Poems make more of an impact when they're shorter. By this, I don't mean just cut down your whole thing to one stanza. Sometimes it does take several stanzas to get a point across or to tell a theme or a story. What I mean is that you should take out any unneeded anything. Words, phrases, stanzas. If something is not helping your poem progress to its ultimate goal, it should probably be removed. Sometimes I've had to take out my favorite parts of poems because of this.
I'm going to skip nit-picking the rest of the poem, not because there aren't more awkward phrases, but because I've babbled on long enough. if you want me to point them out, just ask and I will c:
I hope this helps! Keep writing!
~fortis
Why is there only one stanza with three lines?
Seriously, that took me out of the piece entirely when I saw it.
((Sorry for sounding harsh from the get-go DX))
Ok, ok, besides that moment, I think that this is actually a really well written poem. I like that you didn't make it rhyming, considering that the subject-matter doesn't call for it. The idea of comparing education to religion is a very interesting concept that really ties well together, though unlike the reviewers below, I'm not going to go into how this is in a way bashing church, even though I will point out that you include different types of religions when you talked of both poly- and mono-theism.
In my eyes, I don't see you really bashing religion, more than you're bashing the education system. And y'know what? I totally agree lol
Education, especially here in the United States, is rather hit and miss in terms of requirements and build. Hell, there are some schools that no longer have art and music, which really bothers me because I was very involved in that before I graduated. They force students to learn from a strict list that doesn't fit everyone and is very restricted in a way, and I like that you did make note of that. It also helps that you used religion as a metaphor because it ties in other ideas that make your message even more important.
But then we have that stanza; please make it four lines. It's distracting, it throws off your meter, and it makes the whole piece look unfinished in a way.
That is my only criticism. I hope to see more work from you in the future.
Thanks,
~Maddie
THANK YOU. Finally, someone who truly understand the message. The use of religion is here is nothing more than a metaphor, and I include evil Bibles there that would mean this religion is a bad one.
I noticed the three-lines stanza, it did look weird but I had no desire to fix it at that time but after reading this I think I should. >.>
The gods are supposed to be plural from the start to the end, I should fix that too. Again, thanks for the review.
You're very welcome dear XDD
a religious point of view even thought i'm atheist i appreciate this poem
people are d**** it's a fact
gods are sadistic it's a fact
if you don't believe in some people faith they will not like you
and you write that fact good job
censored by staff
It's not exactly what I meant but thanks for the review.
Amen brother!
Just kidding. How's it going? Uriah the Pariah here to honk his nose and give an unwarranted review on your work, "The Religion of Education."
First, as a forethought, I view this as a gradual "crisis of faith," as undergone by anybody with a religious upbringing who eventually learned to think for themselves. For the record, this doesn't describe me, and is not a biased opposition to any particular belief, at least not offensively. I never had any sort of religious implementation or initiation during my youth.
I understand that you intentionally avoided the use of a monotheistic, potentially Christian "God," and I use the term and following examples at the risk of being ignorant.
In reference to the first stanza ; the sacred book of your particular faith is, most likely, the only spiritual knowledge you possess as a child. It is infallible, it is holy, it is pure and it is universal. God loves all, and all love God. Just remember to pray, go to church, eat Fish for one special week during the year. Do this and more, and after you die, you'll go to Heaven and get all the cookies.
And this works for awhile. Until, one day, you realize that God can be a bit of a d***.
"After some times the signs arrived -
the shocking thunders, the endless rain.
And when it came, the god tortures you.
Through it you learned a bitter lesson."
And then, after some applied reason and rational thought, you may conclude that while God may be a bit of a d***, humans themselves are the bigger d****.
"For they would decide your blurry future
with their permanent answers to everything you had learned.
They would judge how intelligent you were.
Whether you were smart or just full of yourself."
Now, God, being a bit of a d***, combined with people, being a big of a dick, proves to be a cataclysmic typhoon of d***ery. Wars, sacrifices, plagues, floods, fires, incest, slavery, censorship, suppression and more, all the result of God being God and people being people. The Education of Religion and the Religion of Education
Like a Joker/Batman dynamic. Batman is needed to reprehend the Joker, but if there was no Batman to reprehend the Joker, the Joker would have no reason to be the Joker.
Despite the accuracy/inaccuracy of my personal interpretation, I enjoyed reading this and I commend anybody courageous enough to challenge their creed.
censored by staff
Thanks for the review. I appreciate your interpretation on this.